Posted on 06/02/2013 6:40:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
According to a study that was just released by Boston Consulting Group, the wealthiest one percent now own 39 percent of all the wealth in the world. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent only own 1 percent of all the wealth in the world combined. The global financial system has been designed to funnel wealth to the very top, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to expand at a frightening pace. The global elite continue to hoard wealth and heap together enormous mountains of treasure in these troubled days even though the economic suffering around the planet continues to grow.
So exactly how have the global elite accumulated so much wealth? Well, one of the primary ways is through the use of debt. As I have written about previously, there is about 190 trillion dollars of debt in the world but global GDP is only about 70 trillion dollars. Our debt-based global financial system systematically transfers wealth from us and our governments into the hands of the global elite. And of course the gigantic banks and corporations that the elite control are constantly gobbling up everything of value that they can find: natural resources, profitable small businesses, real estate, politicians, etc. Money, power, ownership and control are becoming very, very tightly concentrated at the top of the food chain, and that is a very dangerous thing for humanity. When too much money and power gets into too few hands, it almost always results in tyranny.
What will eventually happen when the global elite have ALL the wealth?
Will the rest of us work as serfs in a system that they have iron-fisted control over?
And what if they decide that they don't really need billions of people working for them? Will they decide to implement population control measures in order to reduce the number of "useless eaters"? It is already happening in China and other highly centralized societies.
When all of the economic rewards of a society go to a very small handful of people, it tends to be very destabilizing. We have seen this again and again throughout history.
When people have everything taken away from them and they have nothing left to lose, they tend to become very desperate. And right now we are rapidly hurtling toward a time of great global instability. Anger and frustration are growing all over the globe, and the rate at which the gap between the wealthy and the poor is widening seems to be accelerating. Just check out these numbers...
-The wealthiest 1 percent of the global population now owns 39 percent of all the wealth on the planet.
-According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to 32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the planet.
-According to a study conducted by Credit Suisse, the bottom two-thirds of the global population owns just 3.3% of all the wealth.
-A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research discovered that the bottom half of the world population owns approximately 1 percent of all global wealth.
-It is estimated that the entire continent of Africa only owns approximately 1 percent of the total wealth of the world.
-Approximately 1 billion people throughout the world go to bed hungry each night.
-If you can believe it, more than 3 billion people currently live on less than 2 dollar a day.
In the world that we live in, money equals power. And the more money that the top one percent accumulate, the more power they will accumulate as well.
So exactly who are the top one percent? I discussed this at length in my previous article entitled "Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings". The global elite are absolutely obsessed with power and control and they have been working to implement their agenda for a very long time. In the end, they hope to unite the entire planet under a monolithic global system that they control. They are actually quite open about this - it is just that most people do not want to believe it.
The gap between the wealthy and the poor is rapidly growing in the United States as well. Sadly, this means that the middle class is steadily disappearing as the ranks of those that are living in poverty continues to increase.
But of course not everyone is doing badly in the U.S. right now. In fact, those that own stocks have had lots of reasons to celebrate in recent months.
So who owns stocks?
Well, the wealthy do of course. In fact, approximately 60 percent of all individually held stocks are owned by the top 5 percent of all Americans.
During the last recession, Americans lost 16 trillion dollars of wealth. Since then, about 45 percent of that wealth has been "recovered", but the vast majority of that "recovery" has been due to rising stock prices. The following comes from a recent Washington Post article...
From the peak of the boom to the bottom of the bust, households watched a total of $16 trillion in wealth disappear amid sinking stock prices and the rubble of the real estate market. Since then, Americans have only been able to recapture 45 percent of that amount on average, after adjusting for inflation and population growth, according to the report from the St. Louis Fed released Thursday.
In addition, the report showed most of the improvement was due to gains in the stock market, which primarily benefit wealthy families. That means the recovery for other households has been even weaker.
“A conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified,” the report stated.
Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most thriving middle class in the history of the world. That was a great thing. But now the middle class is being destroyed and government dependence has surged to an all-time high.
The following are some of the incredible statistics that show how wide the gap between the wealthy and the poor in America is becoming...
-The wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.
-In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
-According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
-The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.
-On average, households in the top 7 percent have 24 times as much wealth as households in the bottom 93 percent.
-Between 2009 and 2011, the wealth of the bottom 93 percent of all Americans declined by 4 percent, while the wealth of the top 7 percent of all Americans increased by 28 percent.
-The poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
-The top 0.01% of all Americans make an average of $27,342,212. The bottom 90% make an average of $31,244.
For much more on how poverty is rising and the middle class is being destroyed, please see my recent article entitled "22 Facts That Prove That The Bottom 90 Percent Of America Is Systematically Getting Poorer".
Obviously we have a huge problem here.
With each passing day, poverty is rising and more people are becoming dependent on the government.
So what is the solution to this mess?
This kind of stuff does have a low tolerance, because if there isn’t the whole site gets taken over by conspiracy theories and Jew-hate.
More puzzling is the tolerance for supporters of pro-homo pro-abortion Romney, even after he’s proven a failed candidate. Rove’s disciples are allowed free rein to insult and dispirit conservatives in preparation for the next GOPe liberal candidate.
An excellent reason to move from an income based tax to a consumption based tax.
The government is already redistributing the wealth: to the banksters.
Will the rest of us work as serfs in a system that they have iron-fisted control over? <<<<
I seemed to remember one particular bloody period in history when the elite owns pretty much everything and the rest as serfs.
Yeah, I am talking about the French Revolution, that worked out pretty well for the peasants to prosper in equality, no? ////
Other periods in human history also showed similar pattern to equally redistribute ‘wealth’, so why don't we have ‘it’ (anarchy) more often, then?
And most of that top 1% is probably liberals like Gates or a bunch of oil rich muzzies.
The fact that they can't make good decisions shouldn't be my problem.
Sounds like an Obama tax speech.
it's a false dichotomy... it is not a zero sum game, they print more money each and every single day, and it's up to YOU as to how much or how little of it you get and how you spend it the fact that somebody has 1000 times more money than i do has no bearing on how much i make or my life style.
A disparity between the wealthy and the poor has two causes.
One is the “Old Europe disease”, in which the wealthy and powerful go to great lengths to not just enrich themselves, but to keep everyone else poor. Carlos Slim in Mexico, for example, has likely never enriched anyone outside of his family and peers.
Bill Gates, however, not afflicted with this disease, has created several multi-billionaires, a bunch of billionaires, hundreds of multimillionaires, and thousands of millionaires. No skin off his nose.
The other cause of wealth disparity is government.
*Not* because government hasn’t redistributed the wealth of the wealthy, but because government hasn’t used taxation properly, to give a profit motivation for the wealthy to invest in research and development and new businesses; while having punitive taxes on investments that are more like gambling; and both these policies stabilizing the economy so much that the wealthy *want* to invest, rather than hoard.
Government should not care if the wealthy get wealthier, as long as the rest of society increases its wealth at the same time. Since government cannot increase the wealth of society directly, they need to encourage the wealthy to do so.
He's no dummy. He wants more wealth ;-)
The fact that their tax rate is 15% or less and mine is 33% has quite a bit to do with my lifestyle, not to mention the inequity.
Actually, a simple property tax would serve the purpose of running the government. As we continue to improve our productivity we need to seriously consider an EXPORT TAX so the foreigners get to pay our taxes.
And the bottom 50%, surprise, surprise, still don’t spend as much as you do.
There seems to be some dreamy goal of equalizing income as a good thing. I note that skiing on flat ground is not much fun. An economy without rich people goes nowhere.
Even the king was in favor of democratic reforms.
Not everyone agreed!
that is a whole different argument, taxation was never mentioned in the article... only about who owns what, not how much the tax rate is, which should be a flat tax across the board
And the results were horrible: between 1917 and 1989, I wouldn't be surprised that the death toll from labor camps, forced exile, deliberately-induced famine and outright mass executions in the countries you mentioned to get rid of the so-called Bourgeoisie class may approach 200 MILLION.
It has everything to do with it. The ultra elite pay no income tax because they don't have jobs. Rather they pay capital gains which until recently was 15%. I am not arguing in favor or increasing capital gains but rather going to a consumption type tax. A silly flat tax is based upon......income.
Articles like this make it sound like wealth is a finite thing or number, and of course, the super-rich have the lion’s share. The fact is most average people are a lot wealthier than they were 40-50 years ago. I grew up with seven siblings in a lower-middle class family. We would have been considered poor today. Now I have two or three siblings with total wealth over one million. And my wife and I are doing quite well, thank you. However, if the trend towards quasi-commies like Obama continues, total wealth will decline. Socialism will eventually kill all healthy economies.
Oh, Mr. Ford doesn’t mind if you row your little dinghy to your daily job scrubbing and polishing his yacht. Especially if he paid for his yacht by selling dinghies!
The more dinghies he sells - which are made not by him but by your neighbors, who row them every day to work in his dinghy factory - the bigger yacht he can buy for you to scrub and polish.
But as soon as everybody owns a yacht, who’s going to want to scrub and polish Mr. Ford’s? Or work in his dinghy factory?
Mass production is not a bad thing. But Ford, Morgan, et al used it to destroy the independent livelihood and get us all working in the dinghy factories so they could live off our labor - much the same way the banksters got us in debt so they can live off the interest we pay, and thereby give capitalism a bad name.
(Ever notice how “economic health” indicators are things like housing starts, durable goods purchases, etc? - things that consumers pay interest on.)
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